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Lydia’s chest constricted as all her breath left her. “A… cure?”
“Yes. She is a very special member of her breed, and her sting works in humans, for their disease of the cells. It will cure him—as long as we get it into him now. If he becomes much sicker, he shall not be strong enough to handle it.” Blade held out the little box to her. “If you want him back… I will give her to you.”
“Why would you… help us?”
Blade’s eyes traveled over her face as if he were memorizing her features. And then he said, with evident sorrow, “I have my reasons. That is all you need to know.”
“I don’t trust you.”
“Allow me to show you how I am so certain.”
Without warning, her mind became filled with images that were like memories, except they were about events she had never seen or experienced. She saw… decades of… things, all around the scorpion and its venom… and people. And it was from the point of view of someone… else…
Blade, she thought. These were Blade’s memories.
When the deluge stopped, she put her hand toher temple and tried to rub away the ache that had sprung up there. Just as C.P. had been doing as she’d walked in.
Gus spoke up, loud and clear. “This is insane, get the fucking guards and—”
“Give it to him,” Lydia snapped. “Right now.”
THIRTY-SEVEN
ABSOLUTELY FUCKINGNOT.”
As Gus laid down the law—because someone clearly had to be reasonable in the middle of this shit show—the man in red turned to him.
Before the guy could start blabbing, Gus put his palm up. “This is bullshit. There aresomany reasons I’m not going to allow you to have my patient stung by—”
The smile that came back at him was cold. “You are not involved in this business.”
“The hell I’m not. I’m his fucking doctor.”
“Then why are you getting in the way?”
“You come in here, with a goddamn arachnid in a bug box, making like you’ve got a Nobel Prize in your palm, and you’re accusingmeof getting in the way? And spare me any hocus-pocus, Google doctor talk. When it comes to cancer treatment, that kind of venom is only a facilitator. Chlorotoxin is not a compound that actually kills the tumor cells. It just helpsour modalities get to where they need to be—when appropriate.”
“Ah, but I told you,” the man intoned. Like he was the voice of God or some shit. “She is a very special member of her species, cultivated over generations for—”
“Just give it to Daniel,” Lydia said sharply.“Now.”
Gus pivoted around. The poor woman was leaning over the bed, her hand gripping Daniel’s, her eyes rapt as a convert’s—and he told himself not to lose his temper completely while Daniel was lying there two inches from a coma, and C.P. Phalen was doing absolutely nothing to stop this, and Lydia, as a grieving partner, was getting seduced by a snake oil salesman.
Scorpion venom. Administered by a sting. Wasthiswhere they were all ending up?
“Okay, everybody has to leave now,” he announced. “Lydia, you don’t need this distraction—”
“It’s not a distraction!” She turned to the man. “Blade, I believe you! This explains everything. I saw the light at dawn that means you are my future, but it wasn’t in the way I thought it was! You save Daniel and yougiveme my future—”
Stepping between them, Gus went on man-to-man defense, putting his hands out in front, prepared to shove the red-robed SOB from the room. “I’m going to ask you one more time toleave. And then I’m going to take you out by your asshole because nobody else seems to—”
Before he could get any further, he was forcibly picked up and displaced out of the way. For a split second, he thought it was Daniel, somehow back on his feet. Nope. It was Lydia, and she was stronger than he was—and not just because he was still healing.
Pinning him against the wall, her eyes glowed with a yellow light so bright, he felt the burn in his face—
The wolf. From the forest.
The conclusion came to him with a certainty that made no sense. Yet for some reason, it was clear to him that she was… somehow… what had come out to find him and Daniel. Who had taken them to the footprints. Who had protected them through acreage.
